I wrench my eyes shut, hoping the nightmare passes, and mutter a sacred mantra Paul taught me: “G for Good, A for Able, B for Beautiful, E for Enough.”

“Oh, that old tune,” croons the left Megajoule, depicted helping a woman out of a burning building. “Can’t keep me away for long.”

I scowl at him. “I haven’t seen you in months.” Ever since the lab, this phantom has haunted me. Whatever he is, a mental breakdown, a hallucination, an actual quirk of being a clone of Megajoule, I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone about him, not even Paul. There’s not exactly a good way to break the ice on that one.

The Megajoule on the right, battling a deliberately vague and generic bad guy in his poster, gives me a devil’s smile. A smile of possession, a smile of death. He speaks quickly and casually, as if he were buying gum from a gas station. “Ha. Thought you’d gotten rid of me because you started keeping yourself busy? That’s not how it works.”

I’d thought maybe that was the trick. I met Saw Off and her crew about six months ago, started doing work with them and some of the other masks in the Shells. But it seems he’s only been waiting, although I’m not sure for what. “What do you want?”

“You know I’m only ever trying to look out for you. Keep you on the straight and narrow.” The middle Megajoule’s grin fades into a serious expression. “You’ve spent the last half year cavorting with common masks. Are you content with these streets?”

“Do I get a single moment of peace from you?”

“I’m always here. I see what you see, hear what you hear, and remember what you remember.” The middle Megajoule lifts his legs over the edge of the poster as if climbing through a window. He saunters toward me like some trickster spirit, his grin, impish and gleeful, only amplifying this impression. “Besides, you need me.”

I really wish I knew an exorcist. “I don’t.”

“Oh, well, if you insist.” He pouts, mocking me, and then the grin splits his lips again. “But hang on, buddy. Where are you going to get engrams from if not from me?”

This again. He insists he’s the only reason my Affect is as strong as it is, that he’s the only reason I have access to the hoarded engrams of goodwill in his Affect reservoir. And maybe he’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to do everything he says. Because if he could cut me off, he would have a long time ago, I think. “This is the last job and then I’m going to the lab.”

“But don’t you think we could be doing more? Look at this street, look at these buildings. Who do you think did that?”

I shrug. “Carnality.”

“Capes. They did this, over and over again, with their feeble attempts at ‘saving the world’ that always devolve into utter violence.” Megajoule tutts and shakes his head. “Well, Gabe, isn’t it convenient that you were built for that? Even half my power is enough for you to burn it all down.”

“Finding out about the lab is doing something more. I can get the vengeance I want.”

“And then what?”

I chew on my lip. “I don’t know.”

“I think you should hear this Front out. You might call down the city on your head, maybe all of the Vanguard… but then you can show them what they’re missing and drag this whole wretched plane out of the sky.”

“I’m going to the lab.”

“So you say.” He melts, vanishing into thin air and leaving the ruined candy shop just as it was, but I still feel his presence. “Lead the way.”

I sigh, and defeated without much of a fight at all, lower my head as I leave with the devil hero sitting on my shoulder.

#

So there you have it. I inherited everything I am from the ghost following me around. I inherited half of his power: my version of it is called dynathermokinesis. A word up its own ass that just means I can manipulate energy. Basically, the universe is a soup of energy, heat, sound, and force, and I’ve got a ladle.

With a simple manipulation of forces, I can more or less fly, though more like a bullet than a plane. I can stand in the middle of a furnace and be absolutely fine. And most importantly, I can hit, and be hit, really fucking hard.

The air sings with night-heat for me to absorb. I drink it in: the stockpile of energy inside me rises in volume. I vault over a pharmacy with a collapsed roof: the stores inside quiet just a little. Heat, motion, sound at my command, flowing in and out of me as I will. I hear it everywhere around me: in heartbeats pumping hot blood through veins, in tires squealing as they exchange heat with the cement beneath them.

It’s not long before I arrive at the warehouse.

I take up a spot on a broken roof across the street from the roll up doors leading into the joint and reach out with my thermokinetic sense to study the warehouse. This is common procedure: I can sort out how many people there are from here, their positions, and any special source of heat or force. From across the road human heartbeats are only whispers, but I’ll still be able to hear them.

Thanh told me to expect six or seven.

But I don’t hear any heartbeats. Instead, I hear the faint woosh of heat filtering out of meat. I sense the sharp edges of hundreds of bodies, freshly murdered.

I reach out with my thermokinetic sense again, praying I’m wrong, that I misheard. But no. I’m right. Dreadfully right. I’m listening to the flesh-heat of corpses trundling toward thermal equilibrium with the air.

“We need to leave,” Megajoule says.

“Holy fuck,” I whisper.

“We need to leave, now,” Megajoule says. “This is not worth a thousand dollars.”

My instincts scream at me to flee. Megajoule breathes down my neck to do the same.

It surprises me, then, that I find myself alighting on the street and taking trembling steps toward the warehouse, guided by an almost magnetic energy strong enough to overcome my fear.

“You’re getting involved, Gabe.” Megajoule’s voice has a note of jeer in it. “What happened to keeping your head down? What happened to ‘one last simple job before the lab?’”

I grunt at him. If I give up entirely, Thanh won’t pay me anything at all. I need to find out if the gang Thanh is after caused this mess… or are part of it right now.

“Gabe, you shouldn’t-”

“Shut up! Just shut up! Aren’t you a cape? Don’t capes investigate this kind of thing?” I wish I could punch him in the face sometimes.

Despite my defiance, as I hold the cold metal of the chain on the warehouse door in my hand, my fear almost triumphs in sending me running. An immense killing intent washes out from this warehouse, something evil and vile impressed in the Affect that makes me want to flee. I’m not often scared, as there’s very few things on this planet that could threaten me physically. But whatever this is, whatever happened to the people in the warehouse, I feel it could hurt me. Call it the hunter’s instinct of knowing there’s something tougher than you lurking out there. I suddenly wish I’d not burned my bridges with Saw Off. I can still go back and tell Thanh what I’ve found and forget what I’ve seen.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

But what if there’s someone alive in there? Buried in the corpses, their heartbeat so faint and light that I can’t hear it through the fresh bodies.

I grip the chain and open the warehouse.

It’s one thing to know there are dead people on the other side of a door, another entirely to see them in a chaotic mass. I wade knee-deep into the gore, turning round and round, a squeaky, panicky wheel. I stare at hands outstretched for salvation that never came and limbs twisted in agony, faces either collapsed in like sinkholes or frozen in grimaces of terror.

This is a fresh graveyard. The smell of blood and shit jabs into my nose through my mask, and my stomach turns.

I pull my mask down and lift my goggles up, blinking tears from my eyes. I fight with my dinner and keep it down, just barely.

A small hand pushes out of the ocean of bodies, scaring the shit out of me. A child’s voice curses in Spanish as a boy shoves his way up and out of the carnage. I fill my fist with kinetic energy instinctively. My curled hand glows like steel pulled from a furnace. I reel back in fear.

The boy stares at me, stammering. His eyes grow wide before rolling back into his head. He convulses and falls back onto the pile of corpses.

I realize he’s not going to attack me and stand down. My fist stops shining as the heat siphons back to my heart.

The kid shakes and writhes, his eyes locked on a point past my head and opened so wide that they might fall out of his skull if he wasn’t on his back. I can only vaguely tell he’s Latino – blood soaks his features into something unrecognizable.

“Are you okay?”

He grabs at the sleeves of my jacket as if he could pull my arms out of their sockets. “Pandahead! Pandahead! He did this! Pan-panda-head of panda-everyone-thing-dark-evil-kill-kill-kill-ki-ki-k-k-k-k…” The babbling devolves into monosyllable nonsense, consonants uttered at high speed like a tapping tune.

That name, Pandahead, evokes a memory from the void in my mind. A single spark from the blank darkness surrounding the lab.

#

He didn’t see us, but we could see him. Through the cracks in our stainless steel prison, we saw a man, shorter than most, dressed in a leather jacket that swallowed him to almost halfway down his thighs, head hidden by a helmet scrawled with black and white markings that, at one angle, looked like a panda, and another, looked like a skull.

He drags a young girl by her arm. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes pink and feline, her hair blood red. Her mouth opens as she catches sight of me, showing me the fangs of her teeth.

It is an expression of anguish.

#

I remember where I am, squatting next to the one survivor of this whole mess. “Who is that? Who is Pandahead?” And, to myself, I wonder why I remember him.

The kid relaxes suddenly, closing his eyes and falling into a deep sleep. He’ll live… I think… but only if I get him to safety. Paul has some medical knowledge, he could help.

No answers to be found here. I sigh and extend my power to search for other survivors. There are none. There’s only me and this boy. I put my mask and goggles back on and spend some time digging through the bodies in case I missed someone.

“Told you,” Megajoule says, staring at me through the eyes of a body from one of the corpse mounds. He laughs when he sees my revulsion, floats up from the pile. “Shouldn’t have come.”

I shake my head. “Do you know what this is? This Affect impression is wild.” I almost feel… chilly. Obviously something bad happened here, but someone used a Heavyweight power, and whatever they were feeling at the time was left behind. I’m no empath, but no one could miss this unnatural dread.

“I know as much as you, I’m afraid. You’re right, though. These are unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Megajoule says. “Wait… do you hear that?”

I hear a dozen shutters clicking, too late. A Foundation surveillance drone. The drone resembles a dragonfly, silvery, sharp as a knife. Four rotors whisper, and bright, disorienting light floods into the warehouse from its eyes. Camera surely capturing me and the unconscious kid.

The engines brought it silently through the door, dead cool by some Affect technology I don’t understand and thus hidden from my thermal sense. I should’ve sensed the motion but I was too focused on this tomfuckery.

I warp over with a burst of heat and slice the drone apart with burning fingers. It falls to the floor in molten scraps and I just stand there for a second, considering. Knowing I look massively guilty standing in a massive grave with a massive amount of blood on my hands.

Capes are sure to follow the drone. Could be minutes at most.

I throw the kid over my shoulder and leave the warehouse, hiding with him on rooftop down the street as I wait for someone to show up.

My someone arrives with the sound of an exploding rocket. A streak of fire lights up the sky, echoing like a gong in my thermal sense, and then they hammer the concrete with their landing.

Danger Close is his name. One of the Houston Heroes and one of the most famous capes in the city. On the triangle diagram that all capes sit on between celebrity, officer of the law, and demi-god, Danger Close sits squarely on “officer.” His camouflage patterned armor gives him the stature of a giant. The joints buzz with power. The armor’s visor glows red, and the shoulders and gauntlets glint with promises of bullets and blades.

“Look at Mr. Fancy Tin Can,” Megajoule whispers in my ear.

I smirk at the voice in my head. Sometimes I think I’m getting used to him being around. At least when he’s not being a total dick.

“Why do you suppose he showed up?” Megajoule asks me.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions. He’s the first responder, that’s all.”

“He’s one of the Houston Heroes. They are never the first responders.”

I had to grant that. There’s an army of capes in Houston beneath the Houston Heroes, who tend to be picky about what they tackle.

Danger Close surveys the street and the warehouse, but his emotions are a mystery from this far away. He holds up his fist, and nothing appears to happen, but with my kinetic sense I hear the whistle of a miniature drone. I track the whistling as it moves around the warehouse.

My leg muscles tighten in anticipation. The heat I’ve stockpiled inside me groans to be used.

The drone enters the warehouse through one of the windows.

“What are you after, Mr. Fancy Tin Can?” I whisper.

More drones whisper at the edge of my thermokinetic sense, headed toward the warehouse. I curse; my spying venture has come to an end.

The drones haven’t spotted me yet, thanks to my ability to regulate my heat and avoid coming up on thermal imaging, but if they get close enough they’ll detect my Affect.

I throw the kid over my shoulder, make him weightless with my power, and flee across the rooftops.

I rise on warm currents of air into the city bramble of Houston, where I bounce around the buildings and rooftops. With the boy over my shoulder, I flit through the urban jungle. For an instant, I am suspended in the bright amber of car lights beneath and skyscraper lights above. All I smell is asphalt and burning rubber. All I hear is the summer night on my skin and the energy pooled inside me.

Say what you will of Houston. Say it is a cesspool of business, oil, and crime. Say that it is a dead end and that the land it sits on is a bog.

But also say at night, the city shines like a galaxy. You can look into the swirling colors of blazing projections on the sides of skyscrapers and see something pristine. The skyline pierces the dark of night like radiant spears. When the morning comes, and you’re left with grimy steel, all you have to do is remember the night before when Houston was beautiful.

Even though everything is broken, even though trees don’t grow here anymore and blood rain falls from the sky, it’s still all beautiful.

Orange street lights and the occasional burst of color from downtown Houston slice apart the shadows, so that one street is near pitch darkness and the next is neon daylight. I glide and leap over alleys until I come to my hiding place: an abandoned Vanguard chapel wedged in between the Shells and the Third Ward to the west.

Inside, the chapel reveals why it was abandoned: it’s a former battleground. A blackened scar runs down the left wall, and the feeling of utter rage lingers in the air. Strong Affect imprints, the kind left by a Heavyweight using their power. Yet compared to the warehouse, these are minuscule.

I set the kid down on one of the few remaining benches and listen to his body with my power. To me, all bodies, all people, have distinct patterns — a fingerprint of sorts.

His blood flows normally. His heartbeat drums on rhythm. No fever or temperature abnormality in him. As far as I can tell, he’s physically fine.

Must be around thirteen or fourteen years old. He smells sour. Rank, even. Beneath the stench of his sweat there’s a vague hint of oil. His black hair is greasy, his face pocked with acne scars. And also actual acne.

But the scars on his hands probably have nothing to do with acne.

He wears a metal bracelet inscribed with hundreds of tiny markings that look like circuits, each one a different color of the rainbow. A logo emblazoned into the metal in sharp black letters reads “PK RESONANCE.” Which makes this a PK dampener cuff. The capes usually carry cuffs to put on Affected criminals to cut off both their powers and emotions. That’d mean whoever did this had access to tech usually reserved for capes. “What the hell happened to you?” I breathe.

“What are you doing, Gabe?” Megajoule’s voice is mocking.

“I’m checking him out.”

“Are you actually thinking you’ll play detective?” Megajoule chuckles. I weather it, trying not to feel embarrassed. “Face it, that’s like a bull trying to reassemble a Ming dynasty vase. All you’re gonna do is break more things.”

“So, what? I head back to Thanh, tell him the gang’s gone? What do I do with this kid?”

“You tell me, champ.”

I should just drop him off outside a station house. I’m not equipped to handle this kind of thing. But when I close my eyes and turn away from the kid, I remember my brothers in our tiny rooms, and the torture we endured. Faces in agony. My face. Megajoule’s face. Over and over. A rat king of clones. Watch them drown together.

No, can’t abandon the kid, not yet. Need to know what happened in that warehouse. But since he isn’t waking up any time soon, I feel safe leaving him. I grab a zip-tie from my pocket and bind him to one of the pews. While I do, I glance at his sleeping face. There is sorrow and pain carved into the shape of his eyes and the curve of his frown. I can only wonder at what he dreams.